


The After

by riventhorn



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Or as happy as a post-apocalyptic universe can be, Post-Canon, but there is a happy ending, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4011466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riventhorn/pseuds/riventhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All her life, Furiosa has dreamed of returning to the Green Place, but now, that dream is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fitz_y](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitz_y/gifts).



> For fitz_y, who wanted some Furiosa/Valkyrie
> 
> I've only seen the movie once, and so I may well have screwed up some of the details of the verse, although I tried my best with Google.

Dag gets two of the War Boys to help her move the piano onto the top of the Pillar where the crops grow. After she has planted some of the seeds that she took from the Keeper, Dag sits down and beings to play. The piano keys clink under her fingers, emitting a disjointed tune that wobbles somewhere in between carefree and forlorn. 

Furiosa lowers herself carefully down onto the sunbaked rock and looks at the mounds of dirt that harbor the new seeds. She breathes through her nose, slowly, trying to block out the pain. She is still healing. She listens to the music and imagines that she can see each note tumbling off the side of the Pillar and drifting, drifting down to the sands. 

It is green here. But it is not the Green Place. This place has meant pain and anger and death for so long. When the water crashed down in a raging torrent on the day they returned, she had thought that perhaps it would wash away all the pain and leave her clean and new.

It did not. 

She cannot think of this place as home. It is not the Green Place. The Green Place is gone. Valkyrie is gone. Valkyrie would still be alive if she, Furiosa, had not tried to find the Green Place again. 

*

Capable sits in the middle of the floor, surrounded by War Boys. She plays the hurdy-gurdy, turning the little handle. The song is too small for the large cavern, but everyone is very quiet, listening. 

“I was his Witness,” she says when it is finished. “Nux, I mean.”

The War Boys nod. “He is in Valhalla,” one of them says.

“No.” Capable shakes her head. “He is waiting for us somewhere else.”

The War Boys shift, muttering. 

“There is no Valhalla,” Capable continues. “That was one of Immortan Joe’s lies.” 

The War Boys look at each other, shocked, confused. Furiosa clenches her metal hand and presses further into the shadows by the door, wishing Capable would not come right out and say such things.

But at the same time, she is curious. She wants Capable to explain. She wants to know where Nux has gone because that is where Valkyrie has gone too. That is where her mother went, on the Third Day. 

Capable starts playing the hurdy-gurdy again. The little song vibrates against the rock. “Nux wanted to live,” she says. “He wanted to live when he died.”

The War Boys tilt their heads, trying to imagine such a thing.

*

“What are we going to do about _them_?” Toast the Knowing asks, pointing in the direction of Gas Town. 

Furiosa lowers the telescope and considers.

“I think we should blow it up,” Toast says. “We can’t just wait and do nothing,” she adds when Furiosa remains silent. 

“We need the fuel,” Furiosa says. “For the water pumps if nothing else.”

Toast frowns, unhappy.

Furiosa picks up a wrench and approaches the engine lying on her workbench. “Any attack on the Citadel will fail. We’re well defended. And we have the food. Soon we’ll have more of it, according to Dag.”

“You want to trade with them,” Toast says accusingly.

“Unless you have a better option. Besides blowing them up,” she adds when Toast opens her mouth.

“If not the Gas Towners, it will be someone else,” Toast says after a minute. “There will always be someone who wants to take this from us.”

“Yes.” Furiosa tightens a screw. 

“I wish we had gone into the Salt.” Toast’s voice is thick with unshed tears. “We would have found something. We wouldn’t be _here_.”

Furiosa thinks about what would have happened if they had. Valkyrie would have held her at night. They would have curled around each other, remembering catching lizards when they were small. Valkyrie would have kissed her, once on her forehead and once on her mouth. The sun would have burnt them to dust. She would have died slowly. 

Maybe the quick death had been kinder.

“No one is keeping you here,” she tells Toast.

“If you try to make it on your feet, you’re as good as dead,” Toast returns.

Furiosa holds out the wrench and points to a salvaged motorbike in the corner.

*

Cheedo slams the pickaxe into the rock, dust exploding around her. “We will open a new passage here,” she says, “and build a rookery for the War Pups and the Daughters. It will be open to the stars.”

“You know rock. I know rigs,” Furiosa tells her. 

“That reminds me.” Cheedo takes out another chunk of the wall before continuing. “I heard you drove with Toast to the edge of the Conceivable last night.”

It would be nice, Furiosa reflects, if the Citadel did not always have someone watching. “Toast plans to strike out on her own,” she says aloud. “I wanted to point out some landmarks for her to follow.”

“Toast wants to leave. Do you?”

“No.” _Yes._

“Why?” Cheedo asks because she hears what Furiosa did not say. “There is life here now. There are good things.”

“When I drove the War Rig,” she replies, by way of an answer, “I would dream. I dreamed of the Green Place and…those I had been taken from.”

Cheedo nods, waits. 

Furiosa bends down and picks up some of the crumbled rock, tossing it in her palm. It makes her skin dusty. Finally she says, “I do not know what to dream now.”

Cheedo thinks about this. “Perhaps we do not always need a dream,” she suggests. “Perhaps sometimes it is enough to be awake.”

*

She lies with her cheek pressed to the wet earth, breathing in its scent. She feels the tremor in the ground before Dag starts calling her name as she runs towards her through the rows of corn. 

“It’s Toast,” Dag says, and Furiosa sits up, brushing the dirt from her face. “She’s coming back. Capable saw her through the telescope. There’s someone with her.”

They go down the long, twisted route of stairs and ladders until they reach the bottom of the Pillar. Many have gathered there, curious about the dust cloud which is always a harbinger of someone approaching the Citadel. 

Toast screeches to a halt in front of them and pushes her goggles onto her forehead. She looks annoyed. “At least last time I was gone for longer than one damn day,” she says. 

The person sitting behind her is shrouded in a tattered cloak, head covered. Furiosa watches this strange figure, who is simultaneously known and unknown. She wonders if—

“I found her,” Toast jerks her thumb at the person, “holed up in a rock. She shot a flaming arrow into my tire.” 

The woman pushes back her hood. “I was sure you would have a spare. And I needed you to stop.”

Furiosa cannot breathe. Her heartbeat pounds violently in her ears. It is Valkyrie, back from the dead. 

Valkyrie smiles at her. 

“How did you survive?” Dag asks, her eyes wide.

Valkyrie shrugs. “I have lived all my life in the desert. And I was able to salvage things from the wreckage. But I think a bone in my leg was shattered. I cannot walk far. I could not make it here to the Citadel. Out there, if you are slow, you are dead.” She waves her arm at the vast expanse of sand.

Furiosa still cannot speak, but she goes to her and helps her off the bike. “Hello again,” Valkyrie says, and she touches Furiosa’s face gently, smearing the tears across her cheek. 

*

They lie together on the mattress that Furiosa stuffed into the rusted-out shell of a vehicle. It was the first rig she ever drove, and she nursed the engine until it wheezed its last breath. But she kept the cab, stripped of its wheels and seats, consigned to rust in one place. She wanted to always remember the first time she had felt its engine roar to life and known that the rigs would be her way back to the Green Place.

Valkyrie shifts awkwardly, her one leg a dead weight, and then settles back in Furiosa’s arms. Her hand is warm against Furiosa’s breast and then the edge of her hip. Furiosa kisses her and brushes back her dark hair. 

“The dream of the Green Place helped me survive,” she says. Valkyrie tilts her head, listening. 

“And then you were gone,” Furiosa continues, “and there was no more dreaming. But I did not know how to be awake, either.” 

Valkyrie reaches for her hand, and their fingers slot together.

“Now, we are making a new Green Place. You are here with me, and I am awake. If I were to dream now, it would be a dream of the ending.” Furiosa leans closer, and her lips brush against the smooth skin of Valkyrie’s shoulder as she whispers, “Help me to stay awake.”

Valkyrie nods. “I will.” 

The water pumps turn on, and the Citadel rumbles, the rocks muttering into the night. Furiosa holds Valkyrie and hums a few notes from a lullaby that her mother once sang to her, the memory snatched from the time Before and carried safely in her heart for the After.


End file.
